Why Do Men Run Women's Races?

From the female silhouette set against the San Francisco skyline on promotional materials to its name, the Nike Women's Marathon is clearly marketing to a specific demographic. So why did names like William, Todd and Michael show up among the 20,000 finishers in 2010? Because, quite frankly, it's not a race exclusively for women.

In fact, a few hundred men have been competing in the race since its 2004 debut. The men don't have much to brag about, though. A guy has won the overall title in only two of the past five years. Last fall, Leah Thorvilson (pictured right), a 2012 Olympic trials marathon qualifier from Little Rock, Ark., with a 2:37:56 PR, bested the boys in 2:46:42. A train of men finished behind her in second, third, fifth and sixth, in times that ranged from 2:55 to 3:09.

Out of the hundreds of potential marathons, why have men willingly subjected themselves to a lady-leaning race that rewards its finishers with a girly Tiffany & Co. silver charm necklace?

In Todd Toffoli's case he had won a free entry in a raffle. The 30-year-old Berkeley native felt the timing was right for a fall marathon, knew the weather would be good and appreciated the nearby location. "I'm never going to be super-elite, but I'm always trying to improve my times," Toffoli explains. "A women's race, in that sense, is great, because it's me versus myself. I respectfully said I will let this be the women's race it is supposed to be and the fast women are going to beat me and I'm totally OK with that."

Barely missing a personal best on the arduous course, Toffoli finished behind two men and two women in 3:01:44. He had never earned a top-three podium finish so he hung around afterwards for the award ceremony.

"The women got up there and got their prizes," Toffoli says. "For the men they basically emailed you later. I didn't hold anything against [race organizers] because I knew it was a women's event going in, but I thought it was a little bit funny."

Though he wasn't in it for the necklace, Toffoli did wear his charm to his office one day to show it off. When he eventually received his trophy, he took a picture of it and posted the image in his Facebook profile.

Thorvilson, 32, hadn't thought too much about the gender disparity until the start, when the announcer asked the men to step back so the women could line up in the front. One guy didn't obey the request and that lit a fire in Thorvilson. She soon found herself running alongside him. "

[He] said, 'Are you running the half or the full?' and when I answered that I was running the full he said, 'Oh man, I was hoping you were running the half!'" says Thorvilson. "I decided right then that he was going down." Thorvilson, running as part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training, destroyed that guy and the entire women's and men's fields by nearly 10 minutes.
On the opposite coast, a similar story arose at the Walt Disney World Princess Half Marathon in February. A fairy godmother started the race and many of the 13,798 entrants sported tiaras and tutus. Ken Brooks, one of 683 male racers, didn't.

The 30-year-old registered nurse had traveled from his hometown of Portage, Mich., to participate in the coed relay race with his friend, Chelsey Jones, 24. She wanted to set the course relay record, and Brooks was game. (The "relay" is merely the combined half marathon times of two runners.) New to competitive road racing, Brooks logs 90–100 miles a week and hopes to drop his 2:42 marathon PR into the 2:20s this fall.

Brooks understood the implications of jumping into the middle of all that estrogen. Not only did he have to pick his favorite Disney princess for the race bib, but he had to deal with his buddies questioning his motives before he left Portage. "I told them of my plans to win the relay, and they said, 'You'd better. There is no other good reason to be down there right now,'" Brooks recalls.

The start was staggered--the best women had an 8-minute advantage by the time Brooks jumped off the line. "My goal was to use it as a long tempo run and pass all the women and also win the coed relay, which we did," he says.

According to Brooks, a number of women talked trash as he sped past. "Some of them were profane, but other ones would make remarks like, 'That's no princess …'" he says.

Jacksonville, Fla., resident Jennifer Hanley-Pinto, 33, was leading the race when Brooks passed her at mile 12. "I am pretty sure I called him a tool," she says. She thought to herself, "Really? You're going to take the lead in the last mile of the Princess Half Marathon?" Hanley-Pinto wound up second in 1:22.01, 25 seconds ahead of the women's runner-up, Caitlin Latimer. Two more women crossed the line before the next male finisher.

Jones ran 1:31.49 (25th among women), which, combined with Brooks' time, gave their team--called Kalamazoo Royalty--a definitive win with a 2:45:58. The top women's relay team was a sister-sister act known as Lab Rats (Caitlin Latimer and Eileen Shannon), who finished in 3:11:29. Of the 731 relay teams, 111 were in the coed category.

Hanley-Pinto had traveled to Orlando with her triathlon training partners for a girls' weekend. They went for an 80-mile bike ride on Saturday, raced the half Sunday morning, and then spent the afternoon shopping. She had no problem with Brooks being out there, but "a guy winning an all-girls race, that is poor judgment in my opinion" she says.

It's not the first time this has happened to her. "I ran the first Princess Half [in 2009] and I was leading in that race until a guy [Jonathon Mederos] passed me in mile 3," says Hanley-Pinto, who wound up sixth overall, fifth among women. "He won that race too."

Brooks' 1:14:09 individual victory and PR received little fanfare. "At the finish the announcers were telling everyone to hush and not cheer," Brooks recalls with a laugh. "They had me go to the left out of the way of all of the Disney characters because I wasn't female." Hanley-Pinto supports Brooks' recollection.

"My friends who were at the finish line said it was like hearing crickets," she says. "When he crossed the line he got nothing."

That's not entirely true. Like Toffoli, Brooks walked away with a little bling: a bejeweled finisher's medal in the shape of a tiara.